49 comments:

I found this part illuminating: In my utopian vision — and you can’t raise children without a utopian vision

Really. You can't raise children without visions of utopia? That seems ridiculous. How about teaching your kid to deal with the real world? If you want to dress your kid up all pink and stuff, I don't really object, I don't care.

But don't pretend it says anything about your kid. It is very clearly all about you. The blog and everything. It's about you, not your kid.

Hey, look at me!! I'm raising my kid with an open mind. LOOK AT ME, READERS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES!!

What if a White kid decided he wanted to be Black, and walked around in blackface 24/7? There is nothing wrong with being Black, and it doesn't hurt anyone for him to be faking it, but I bet some people would have a problem with that too. The only argument they would have is: "Hey, it's just not true, so stop wearing that lie." Is that good enough?

Catherine does this a lot. She has a blog about her family. Here's her post from February 17, 2008.

Michael and I celebrated our 18th anniversary yesterday. 18 years! As you know, or don't know and have perhaps wondered about, or revoltedly suspected, we were not married for most of them. I wrote about this particular stubbornness of ours in an esssay in the anthology The Bitch in the House. But then I took a job at Amherst College for the famously excellent benefits, balked over the insurance forms, and checked off "same-sex partner" for Michael, with "same-sex" crossed out. Doh! They called me back in immediately ("If we insured Michael, then we'd have to insure all your boyfriends, wouldn't we now?" they said, which made me feel deliciously trampy, if still underinsured). I called home in tears. "We have to get married!" I cried into the phone. "Otherwise they won't insure you." And Michael said cheerfully, "Honey--are you proposing to me?" And, in my own broke, Blue Cross way, I suppose I was. And so we were married by the town clerk, and suffice it to say, I didn't so much appreciate needing to complete a little safe-sex lecture and be tested for STDs, given that we'd skipped already through that particular leafy glade, having conceived penis-vagina type babies and all. But whatever. All that is a long way of saying that when people ask us what event it is we're celebrating on our anniversary, I hesitate. Should I mention that we used to call it our "bone-iversary"? Probably not.

Even looking back 50 years, Mr. Romney’s claim that the boy’s sexuality was not part of the equation feels implausible to me. Because that’s always the point with children who don’t look right, right? It’s that the refusal by some men and women to dress the part means that the great human drama (a k a heterosexuality) can’t be cast correctly.

She's wrong here.I certainly hope she's wrong when it comes to adults thinking this about children- that children have to look ready for heterosexuality. Otherwise, it's kind of icky.

Long hair really used to be a sign of rebellion. Just like wearing blue jeans to school was. There was a lot more conformity in our culture then. You can still see it in other cultures. In Japan, the school where my friend worked required a doctor's note that a student's hair color was natural if it was anything but black/dark brown.

Even looking back 50 years, Mr. Romney’s claim that the boy’s sexuality was not part of the equation feels implausible to me. Because that’s always the point with children who don’t look right, right? It’s that the refusal by some men and women to dress the part means that the great human drama (a k a heterosexuality) can’t be cast correctly. If we don’t know which is which, how we can pair up everyone in properly reproductive two-by-twos, Noah’s Ark-style?

Seems that the writer wants her son to be gay so she can brag about it. Never occurred to her that teens and preteens often do things without any of the motivations attributed to them by adults. For some kids, the most important thing is to conform, for others it's to stand out.

I live in a very conservative area and the high school kids wear their hair in all sorts of weird ways. It's often one of the few things they can control.

And few of them have anything on the punk scene of the late 70s, early 80s. (Which is a good thing.)

She'll be crushed when the kid starts leaving baby mamas in his wake. Her maternal martyrdom syndrome stifled when all hope for the kid's death from AIDS or even better, slaughter at the hands of a homophobic teen mob is abandoned and leaves Mommy Dearest without a forum for her progressive ideas.

Even looking back 50 years, Mr. Romney’s claim that the boy’s sexuality was not part of the equation feels implausible to me. Because that’s always the point with children who don’t look right, right?

What bullshit. Newman wants to view everyone who disagrees with her so ehe does by imputing motives to them that she has know way of knowing. I didn't know what a "queer" was when I was 12 and didn't care when I found out. But a lot of schools had strict dress and grooming codes back then. The public high school I attended required boys wear socks, tuck in their shirts and such. The basketball coach required short hair.

For the information of perverts like Newman, who see sex everywhere, it's not all about sex and gender roles. Hope your son finds a way to mix with conventional society so he doesn't end up working part-time in a used bookstore like my grandson.